Daytona Beach News Journal
Florida has an abundance of low-wage workers, and a shortage of housing that they can afford. That’s been the case for a long time — though things are worse now for those workers than they’ve been in a long time. As prices go up, people in middle-class professions — teachers, ministers, police officers and medical assistants among them — are being pushed out of the market as well. In Volusia and Flagler counties, at least 60 percent of workers spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing.
There’s no silver-bullet, one-sentence solution that would answer all the need.
There is, however, one item that demands immediate attention. Starting this session and going forward, lawmakers should stop raiding a trust fund created to provide housing assistance and encourage developers to set aside apartments for lower-income renters.
Over the years, lawmakers have repeatedly siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from the Sadowski Affordable Housing Fund, “sweeping” money into the giant pool of cash that is divided up among expenditures ranging from schools to prisons. With the cries of distress from Floridians who can’t find affordable housing reaching deafening levels, this looked like the year lawmakers would stop using the housing fund as their go-to piggy bank. Gov. Ron DeSantis’s budget recommendation directed every penny of the fund’s available revenue for housing, and Senate leaders seem prepared to follow suit.
The House, the other hand, went off the rails.
House leaders want to grab about $200 million in Sadowski money and toss it into the general pot of revenue. That’s one of the biggest cash grabs in the fund’s history. But wait, there’s more: The rest of the money — about $123 million —would be spent only in those Panhandle counties impacted by Hurricane Michael. Volusia, Flagler, Alachua, Marion, Polk, Sarasota, Palm Beach, Duval counties would get nothing. No rent assistance, no help with down payments, no loan guarantees to encourage developers to build apartments and include low-cost units. (The Senate would set aside about $100 million for storm recovery, which is far more reasonable since the bulk of trust-fund revenues would still go to housing.)
There’s no doubt that the storm-shattered counties need help. Michael was a fiercely destructive storm that in some places, flattened entire communities. But stripping money from communities across the state to help with storm recovery is the wrong move.
Instead, lawmakers should be looking to the state’s overflowing reserve funds, which collectively total nearly $6 billion. That’s a rightful point of pride for Floridians — few states have such healthy savings. But eventually, most of the money spent on storm recovery should be reimbursed by the federal government, and those dollars can go back into the reserve fund — ready to meet the needs of the next “Big One.”
Meanwhile, asking the state’s low- and middle-income workers to suffer just so lawmakers can stuff another $1 billion or so into reserves doesn’t make sense. Reserves are called “rainy day funds” for a reason. There’s no doubt that it’s raining in the Panhandle, but hard-working Floridians in communities across the across the state need shelter, too.
Article last accessed here on April 16, 2019. A print-ready version is available here.